Our final convening will focus on Leading Change and Innovation. We will 1) Share and strengthen your Canvas, emerging with a compelling vision for a future learning environment, 2) Deepen our understanding of our graduate aims and design a second signature student experience aligned to a graduate aim, 3) Explore what it means to “lead for innovation” and draft key parts of your Change and Innovation plan, and 4) Celebrate the learning and impact of this year!

iterate

1. Define your vision for the future of school.

Your Canvas is an articulation of your vision for your future school community. It can be a powerful tool to tell your story and to help build your coalition of support for your school redesign work. In mid-June, Excellent Schools New Mexico will use your Canvas as part a process to determine potential follow-on funding for the next school year.

In preparation for Convening 3, take the opportunity as a team to pull all of your work from this experience together into the most succinct and near-final version of your Canvas to date.

This should include: 1) history + context of your community, 2) your prioritized insights, 3) your case for change, 4) your graduate aims, 5) a description of your signature student experience, and 6) a summary of your pop-up.

If it’s helpful, check out these examples for some inspiration. There is no one right way to structure a Canvas, and know that these teams may be further along in their process than you. Feel free to use a format or design that works best for you.

• Edgecombe County Public Schools

• Van Ness Elementary

• Brooklyn STEAM Center

Note: You will have time on both days of the Convening to refine your Canvas.

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2. What has your team been testing and learning?

On the morning of the first day of Convening 3, you’ll share the results of the pop-up your designed during Convening 2.

Run your test, collect and analyze your data (see the pop-up plan in your Canvas). Input the data that you collected during your pop-up into your Canvas.

Connect

3. What is your probable vs. possible?

At the end of day two, your team will have the opportunity to pitch your idea for your reimagined school. Each team will have up to 5 minutes to tell their story and share how they’ve grown their vision from the probable we started with in January to the possible we’ll be aiming for in the coming year. This pitch is different from the Canvas, which tells about your innovation journey – your process.

The pitch, like the Case for Change, is a communications tool; it tells a story and aims to enlist allies to your coalition. Stories are always for a specific audience, so before you begin, choose your audience. Is it Scott from ESNM? Is it your faculty? Is it your families?

In order to best prepare for this pitch, complete the following:

• Review the storytelling slides from Convening 1

• Remember the probable you started with in January. Craft that as a problem statement on a single slide: What was the problem that you discovered through your empathy interviews, the future trends, inspiration visits, DEI, SOLD--that brought you to the realization that you had to reimagine school?

• Prepare a 5-minute, high-level pitch (with 3-6 powerful, resonant, enlisting slides) that addresses the following questions: What is our new possible and how do we plan to get there? How are we reimagining school?

• Select which members on your team will present and support them to prepare and rehearse,

[Optional] Invite staff, community members, students, and families to hear your Canvas pitch and build your coalition to lead and sustain innovation. We invite guests to arrive at the Hiland Theater on Friday, May 24th between 2:00-2:30; presentations will run from 2:30-4:00 PM.

During our second convening, we will be building on the work you’ve done since January by answering two questions: 1) What does the research say about how students best learn and develop? 2) How can we leverage that to strengthen/build on our designs? Together, we’ll finalize your graduate aims, build a signature experience that’s aligned to those student outcomes, and design a pop-up to test that experience with students.

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1. Refine your vision for the future of school.

In Santa Fe, you began to craft graduate aims. In Denver, you will build a signature student experience aligned to those aims. To prepare for this work, update your canvas with your team’s current grad aims and case for change.

To be prepared, please ensure your team has completed:

• A Written Case For Change

• Version 2.0 of your Graduate Aims

Include this work in your team’s Canvas. If helpful, here’s an example of a complete canvas.

Action

Email your coach your most up-to-date Canvas by Friday, March 22.

DISCOVER

2. What does scientific research say about how students learn best? (1 hour)

The convening will explore the science of learning and development, and how teams can apply this knowledge to strengthen their school designs.

We know that teachers know their students best. We also believe it’s important to consider contemporary research about how learning works. Transcend has synthesized this research, which is available here: A Designer’s Primer on the Science of Learning and Development

Action

Please read the Overview, found on pages 7-12; and then divide up the 4 factors such that one member of your team reads one factor each. (ex: one teammate reads the “Motivation” section and one team reads “Identity” section, etc).  

You are welcome to read the whole thing, but we recognize that may not be practical for all.

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3. How has your team been learning & exploring?

We’ll kick off our time together with a short update from each team. Come prepared to share with the cohort (in 3 minutes or less) one big learning your team has had in this process so far, and how you learned it.

Action

Add a photo that represents this learning to this deck by Friday, March 22.

discover

4. Shadow a student &  apply learning science (Optional)

To solidify and make the science of learning and development (“SOLD”) real, you will take it into your own context. How do SOLD principles show up in a student’s school experience?

Identify a student in your school that you can shadow for at least an hour (longer if possible!).

1. Follow the steps in this guide to prepare to shadow. Please use this thought catcher to capture your observations.

2. Once finished with your shadowing, step back and identify where you saw the research present or absent.

Curious about this practice? https://www.shadowastudent.org is a project of School Retool, and it officially begins on February 25, 2019. Dig in for more resources and follow along with other teachers on Twitter using the hashtag #shadowastudent.

What’s working? What’s not?

2. Learn from your community.
(1 hour)

In order to design schools that produce dramatically different results for all students, we must ground ourselves in our community’s history and context.